I found a thread for the Chromebox in the HTPC forum although I consider it more of a streamer than PC so I decided to start/post a thread here. As far as I know the ASUS and HP models are identical outside of their respective cases. I happen to prefer the HP and wanted to get Smoke Silver which Amazon has for $150 (at the time of my purchase). I noticed Best Buy has the HP (Snow White) and decided I could live with it and priced match Amazon. If I decide to punt I can return it to Best Buy without a restocking fee and I believe Amazon charges one.

The process is very simple and very well documented at the following two URLS...

I had zero issues setting up dual boot as I didn't want to "gut" the device before my return period expired. Total time was roughly 30 minutes and only requires a small USB flash drive. I did the installation in my den. The only thing that wasn't install friendly is my wireless keyboard isn't recognized at boot time. Perhaps a BIOS setting can be changed. Once booted it worked like a champ as well as my Harmony remote via a IR sensor.

The debate as been going on for a while now whether the NUC or Chromebox is better. My take is they are more apples and oranges and based on your needs one will be the clear winner. In this case I went with the Chromebox for two reasons. I have played with a good dozen NUCs and I know I wouldn't get a desire to install Windows on the Chromebox. It would require too many upgrades... but never say never.

First pass XBMC is running great and has already upgraded itself. Yes HD audio is supported. Beyond that I can't comment at least for a few days.

A few points of interest...

The Celeron version is more than powerful enough to run Kodi "without compromise"

Limited Colour Range - Selected (based on how the rest of the chain is calibrated - if selected add autostart.sh to /storage/.config with the following xrandr --output HDMI1 --set "Broadcast RGB" "Full"

I recommend reading this post/thread for further information regarding calibrating your display.

SSH Access

I recommend using putty to remotely access the Chromebox. Log in using root with password: openelec

As an example to view the various output settings you would enter: xrandr --verbose
Which displays similar to the following - you can arrow up and down to view the various lines (note there was no active display when I did such)

To mount a network drive at boot time simply add the mount command to the /storage/.config/autostart.sh file - if it doesn't exist you will need to create it. There is a working sample in the image attachments... of course you need to change the username, password, share (//192.168.1.136/tv) and mounting point (/storage/videos) to match your values. Be sure the mounting point exists or it will fail.

Here's a link to a few popular commands. If you know vi (text editor) it helps when you need to create and or edit files. However in many cases you can create the file in Windows and simply drop the file into the appropriate SMB share. Just be sure it's stored in plain text without a default file extension.

Current Affairs

I have installed OpenELEC 5.0.8 (Kodi 14.2) via Standalone. For live TV and recordings I'm using the DVBLink Add-on with DVBLink running on my NAS.

DVR support

If you are interested in using the Chromebox/Kodi for TV viewing check this thread for one option. Another is using ServerWMC covered in my WMC thread.

If you use the following software please consider making a donation to one or both of the groups. What would they cost to purchase as a commercial software package?

XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes.

I have the Asus Chromebox and love how it works with XBMC. The setup took a little time to complete, but it was well worth it. It plays any and every file I throw at it, and it does HD audio, including multichannel FLAC perfectly. I also did dual boot and use Chrome for full screen video in browser when needed.

For the price, this is a true winner. It replaced an Oppo BDP-103, and I don't miss the Oppo at all. I just use a (much) cheaper Blu-Ray player for discs and the Chromebox for everything else. I sold the Oppo and will use the leftover cash for other toys.

You can if you have a PVR backend. I was thinking of using pvr.wmc, but it looked like quite some effort to set-up and you need WMC either running under Window 7/8 on the HTPC or another PC you're using as the WMC server.

Instead, what I do is use Simple.tv (I have a Simple.tv gen 1 box) with the Android app for it sideloaded on my Fire TV with XBMC. From XBMC, I have a direct shortcut to Simple.tv. Only caveat is that you need a mouse inside Simple.tv app.

I was thinking of going with a Chromebox since apparently it supports HD audio, but it also want to watch and record OTA local channels. I don't think I can do that with the Chromebox, can I?

With Ubuntu/XBMC you can use NextPVR or some such back-end and record/view OTA. It works great although you would have to subscribe to a guide service. However I would recommend viewing on the Chromebox via OpenELEC/XBMC and letting another PC (Windows) do the recordings via WMC. With ServerWMC installed on the PC it will stream live TV and recordings to the Chromebox. You can schedule recordings and virtually everything else inside of XBMC.

If you search my WMC thread there are images of the XBMC's Live TV interface and lots of related information.

Okay, you may have pushed me to finally give this a go over the weekend . I've read about issues with permissions; is it common, and how do you get around it? What I'd like to do is use my old Win7 laptop with WMC and have that be the server that my Chromebox and Fire TV's access. Will this work, and with these multiple clients? Also, where do the actual recordings get stored? I'm guessing on the server/PC with WMC? Thanks.

I've read about issues with permissions; is it common, and how do you get around it?

Only permission to be concerned about is the Recorded TV folder (per WMC). You need to provide access to this directory. You do this via the tab shown in the image below. If something is wrong it will let you know when you try to enter the values.

WMC uses very little resources and will happily run on just about anything. It's very stable and even an external USB 2.0 drive is fast enough to record four recordings and stream concurrently.

The recordings have to be stored locally. You can't use a network drive. With the exception being iSCSI. You can record directly to your NAS or other device using iSCSI.

On the client side be sure to enter the IP address or Host name for the WMC PC (server) when you configure the Add-on. As shown in the image.

Anything further to report? I'm thinking of going with either NUC or Chromebox and the Chromebox sure would be easier on the budget right now. By the time I get a known good configuration of the NUC with something other than Celeron I'm looking at $300 plus. I don't care about recording television or anything like that. I want to be able to play my BD-ISO and MKV files with HD audio and problem free 24p from my unRaid server and do occasional streaming of add-on content through XBMC.

Anything further to report? I'm thinking of going with either NUC or Chromebox and the Chromebox sure would be easier on the budget right now. By the time I get a known good configuration of the NUC with something other than Celeron I'm looking at $300 plus. I don't care about recording television or anything like that. I want to be able to play my BD-ISO and MKV files with HD audio and problem free 24p from my unRaid server and do occasional streaming of add-on content through XBMC.

Any particular questions that you have about the Chromebox. Been using mine with OpenELEC since May and I love it. The hardest part is the installation, but use the guides from the XBMC forum (the one led by Matt Devo) and you'll be fine.

I was thinking of NUC, too, but I went with the Chromebox because I just wanted a media appliance. The fact that it comes with an SSD and the memory already installed was awesome. Cold start to OpenELEC takes about 5 seconds and running XBMC is smooth as butter.

The only issue I had was that harware acceleration was causing the video to occasionally freeze during playback, but the latest Gotham Beta has that fixed and I haven't seen a single issue since upgrading.

My recommendation is Chromebox + FLIRC. Let's you pretty much customize the remote control to work any way you'd like.

The only issue I had was that harware acceleration was causing the video to occasionally freeze during playback, but the latest Gotham Beta has that fixed and I haven't seen a single issue since upgrading.

Did you select Limited Colour Range via XBMC?

On my first pass calibrating I did along with setting my projector to...

HDMI Input - Normal
Image Setup - 7.5% (in theory Auto would set it to the same value)

Which should get me Video levels (not PC). Both Contrast and Brightness tweaked nicely. Using the Forum's test patterns the APL test pattern looked great. No clipping of black or white. Although Contrast was nearly maxed before it began clipping white. I guess I should try using PC levels as well to see how it works out.

Charles, thanks again for your help via PM in my setting up ServerWMC for use by my Fire TV clients. I still have a Chromebox, but thinking of eBaying it. FTV is more of an all-in-one box (Netflix, Amazon, XBMC w/live TV and occasional games). Also, I think FTV's YouTube app is nicer than trying to use YouTube via XBMC. For dedicated home theater use, I still rely on Mede8er X3D (full 3D playback, proper 23.976 and hd audio).

Charles, thanks again for your help via PM in my setting up ServerWMC for use by my Fire TV clients. I still have a Chromebox, but thinking of eBaying it. FTV is more of an all-in-one box (Netflix, Amazon, XBMC w/live TV and occasional games). Also, I think FTV's YouTube app is nicer than trying to use YouTube via XBMC. For dedicated home theater use, I still rely on Mede8er X3D (full 3D playback, proper 23.976 and hd audio).

Let me know if you decide to sell the Chromebox, I might be interested. I like the FireTV but I have started getting messages about full memory and I keep having to change video settings when going from XBMC streaming video content to my local content (BD-ISO and MKV). It doesn't play VC1 encoded files and I don't think it's really handling 24p properly. I have a Mede8er (450X2 I think is the model). That little player has been about the best I have had besides my Dune and if I could get a jukebox working on it I might move it to the theater room instead of the bedroom where it currently sits.

With FTV (I have 4x of them), I always leave about 1GB or so of space unused. Too bad they only have 5GB or so of usable space to begin with.

I just started seeing the message in the last few days. I haven't added any apps, games or anything so I'm not really sure what I can delete. Do you have yours setup for "0 cache" or something else? I found mine buffers less that way on XBMC content. I'm finding that all of that stuff is very source dependent. Movies seem to work pretty well but TV shows (not live), seem to always want to buffer. I'm using Navix for most of the TV stuff (this is my wife's only interest in the FireTV and XBMC).

Can the Chromebox running OpenELEC be woken up from sleep or turned on from a IR remote using FLIRC by chance?

Yes.

For me this is a mute issue as I use it in a dedicated room and I kill the power (via a Brickwall) when I'm done. However I did some testing with the following results...

Under System Power Saving you can configure if and when the display is turned off after x minutes of being idle. Works fine.

When I exit XBMC and select Suspend I can "wake" it up with my harmony remote. In my case I have the standard BIOS with dual boot so once it wakes up it goes to the screen where I select (Crtl L) OpenELEC. I presume if you changed the default boot to OpenELEC or wasn't using dual boot at all it would automatically resume into OpenELEC.

On my first pass calibrating I did along with setting my projector to...

HDMI Input - Normal
Image Setup - 7.5% (in theory Auto would set it to the same value)

Which should get me Video levels (not PC). Both Contrast and Brightness tweaked nicely. Using the Forum's test patterns the APL test pattern looked great. No clipping of black or white. Although Contrast was nearly maxed before it began clipping white. I guess I should try using PC levels as well to see how it works out.